Mulligan, Take Your Mark. Part I of many to follow…

Below is a piece of the first private blog post I did in preparation for The Mulligan Mile, prompted by my trip back to my high school track to run with the current team. My first time on that track in more than 30 years. What was I thinking???

If you had another shot at something, what would it be? What would it mean to your life today to pursue it?

Today, as the high school track team practiced, I asked the coach’s assistant, and self-proclaimed “Math Girl” to take my picture with my iPhone. And instead of a clueless but carefree teenager with the pleasures and pains of college and jobs and wife and kids ahead of him, she digitally captured a grey-haired, paunchy, weathered, ordinary off-the-shelf old guy. If we had met in the mall, she’d probably thought it more likely that I was an off-season Santa Claus than what I really felt like inside: a soul-searching runner toeing the line for a fresh start to a midlife that had suddenly gotten very complicated.

While the reasons behind my trip back in time may have been cloudy and complicated, I kept most of that to myself. My task here was simple. I was here to run like hell and see what happened. Cotton-free, orthotic-propelled and grateful for the chance to test myself against the same cinder track that had been the foundation for every racing step I’ve taken over the past 32 years. I was here to claim what was taken from me back then. I was here for a mulligan on a race that never happened.

Taking a mulligan on a race that never happened may sound like a quixotic quest. It’s all that and more– and I’m glad you are here to share your thoughts on what it means to live your own mulligans.

You may have read about The Mulligan Mile in Runners World. It’s my personal account of trying to recapture a little bit of the juice of my early years by training to see how fast I could go in the 2012 edition of the The Fifth Avenue Mile. It was both the hardest I’ve trained since high school and the most fun and rewarding. What I went through helped me focus on making every moment count– and I believe that made all the difference in the race and in my life.

If you had another shot at something, what would it be? What would it mean to your life today to pursue it?